Artists’ Books and Postage Stamps

A group of artists’ book enthusiasts met yesterday at State Library of Queensland to share their artist’s books made in response to a gift of postage stamps by colleague and fellow artist Helen Sanderson.

Helen Sanderson ‘Refaced’

The postage stamps were duplicates from Helen’s husband’s collection which surfaced during the packing up of their family home in Brisbane in preparation for relocation to the Sunshine Coast.
Helen distributed the stamps to ‘SWAG’ now known as ‘SWAGIES’ or The Second Wednesday Art Group with a request for the stamps to be used to create artist’s books.

Loani Lee ‘Stitched up stamps’

After the move to the Sunshine Coast Helen joined The Wallace House Book Group, at Noosaville and issued the same challenge to her new artist friends.
Yesterday the two groups of artists came together, displayed and discussed their books.

Rosie Penfold

Artists’ books are art works that use the form or concept of a book and in works displayed by the group at SLQ, stamps informed their work in a variety of ways. Some grouped stamps by theme to make their artwork. For example birds in books by Helen Sanderson and Tricia Smout, flowers in Gabi Dick’s book and Charles & Diana in Karin Hannigan’s book.

Karin Hannigan

Tricia Smout ‘Avian Alliterative Alphabet’

Others used country of origin as a theme; for example Rosie Penfold’s book with Chinese stamps and Loani Lee’s ‘Gold Box’ which contained a book and embroidery reflecting on her time living in Papua New Guinea.

Loani Lee

Another influence was postage delivery systems as with Robyn O’Brien’s ‘By Air Mail Par Avion’, Lena Tisdall’s ‘The Journey’, Di Tait’s ‘Lost in Transit’ and Joan Burton-Jones’ ‘Australia Post’.

Robyn O’Brien

Leena Tisdall ‘The Journey’

Joan Burton –Jones ‘Australia Post’

Tiny stamps invoke tiny books as seen in Trish Bradford’s ‘Munich Olympics’, and ‘Collection of Reef Stamps’, Robyn O’Brien’s ‘tiny stamp book’ and Gabi Dick’s ‘Flower book’. Margaret Olsen took the challenge literally and created ‘An Almost Complete History of Australian Postage Stamps' in which each page was dedicated to a theme of Australian stamps - some with ‘pop-ups’ and another reflecting on the Australian icon, Sid Nolan’s Ned Kelly.

Gabi Dick

Margaret Olsen ‘An Almost Complete History of Australian Postage Stamps’

It was a morning full of surprises, seeing the work of artists whose artist’s books are already held in the Australian Library of Art and the work of others whose artist’s books we may acquire in the future. Yes I do have the best job in the library working with the Australian Library of Art’s artists’ book collection!

Di Tait ‘Lost in Transit'